*
Some hours later, my senses were restored in the medical bay.
‘Will he survive’? I enquired of Adrian.
The doctor focused on me. He seemed a very tired man. He turned back towards the console and replied, ‘his injuries are not severe. We will restore him to full health in a day or two. But you should not have brought him here. You should have left him to die back on Earth with his soul still intact. He cannot survive the influence of the artefacts. You have left him with only two options. To kill himself at his own leisure in full control of his own actions, or try to kill us all on the volition of some unnatural force. Either way, he will die.’
The doctor returned to his work. Vials hissed and machinery whirred softly. I knew what he was saying. I just didn’t believe me.
The doctor cleared his throat. It was apparent that my presence here was a kind of distraction for him, but I had nowhere to go.
I took a walk about the ship. I needed to clear my head. The silence on board the ship was unbearable. Every sound I made echoed of the materials of the ship. Only the hum of the life support system made its presence known. I had walked for what felt like hours before I had what I thought was a clear understanding of the layout of the ship.
In total there were three levels, the lowest was for crew quarters, the middle and largest was for general operations and housed the CIC, and the top floor contained the science and technical wards.
The contrast between each section was spectacular. The lowest level could best be described as an endless hallway full of doors to either side. It was unremarkable. Each room was the same, differing only in the small unconscious personal touches that the hundred and twelve strong crew had added to each of their quarters
In between every fifth door was a screen displaying my position on the ship and a link that would provide directions to any destination that I wished. Blue beams were projected from floor on one side and white on the other so that in an emergency crew members would know in which direction they were heading. This I had been told by a husky voiced lieutenant in brief introduction to the ship. What he had said was simple. ‘If you hear alarms and your at the front, follow the white lines. If you are at the rear, follow the blue ones. Forget that, don’t bother moving.’
The spikes meanwhile of light glowed coolly throughout the length of the vessel. Their brightness wasn’t warm it was somber, even purposeful. Yet it did nothing to alleviate how featureless the place was. All things considered the effect of this design element was to make the ship seem to go on forever. The lights would slowly come closer together the further away they were, and the hallway would go on for infinity. It was the opposite of stifling, it was terrifying. It was lifeless.
Taking the lift to the middle section I was confronted by a sea of busy people. The General Operations floor consisted of a series of open planned rooms separated by huge arches with membranes in between. In my whole lifetime I had never seen artificial membranes. We had lost that technology along with the United World. It seemed at times as though we had lost everything in the entire world, the day the Resource Wars came to an end. We had lost all the green spaces, all the life extending treatments - in many ways he had even lost our liberty. Everything since that point had been focused on rebuilding what was lost, of serving the future generations. In the end it had all been a fabrication, set into motion by people I had never known, whose intention was the simplest of all intentions - to keep as many of us going for as long as we had left.
But such thoughts made little difference to my present reality. Instead of continuing with these musings, I resolved myself to take in as much information about the ship as possible. Who knew, with my present ability to find myself in trouble, I may end up needing the information.
I walked through membrane number three and into the Command and Information Centre. This was the nerve centre of the ship. There was a series of ovals within which a person would sit surrounded by a perimeter of screens. Above each oval there was a holo sign stating ‘tactical,’ ‘navigation,’ ‘helm,’ ‘weapons’ etc. These ovals gravitated towards a central pedestal upon which a sign floated stating, ‘Operations Chiefs.’ It was there that the black clad superiors stood above all else conducting the orchestra beneath.
Tiring quickly of the military scene of the CIC I traversed the cascade of fast moving people towards the nearest access lift.
‘Hello George,’ stated the mind numbingly polite voice of the ship idiosyncratically. ‘Please state you desired floor.’
‘Floor one,’ I replied tiredly. After all I had had much to think about and my mind was slowly succumbing to the desire to sleep.
‘Of course George. Going up.’
The system chimed and the doors opened when my floor was reached. I was stopped in my tracks when the computer suddenly chirped, ‘George. The Captain has requested that you dine with her at your earliest possible convenience. Shall I set a reservation?’
‘Tell the commander I will be available within an hour.’
‘Of course George. I’ll leave you to your musings.’
It was a curious enough response from the machine. My musings, how on Earth did he know what I was doing? The chances were the thing had been lifted from a long abandoned hotel somewhere. Maybe it had been dragged through the Waste, delivered to the shipbuilders and hastily patched to operate the ship. A hotel operating a warship, now there was a thought.
My thoughts began to move onto more comforting subjects and eventually turned back to taking in the vessel’s architecture.
The science deck was indeed a marvel. Glass walls divided rooms with metal arms, white plastic devices and grey clad personnel. My understanding of the sciences was at best limited. For me the floor offered a tantalising glimpse of wonders beyond my comprehension. What I was certain of was that the deck was undertaking research of great importance. Everything here seemed so big. Even the noises were louder.
The scene reminded me of trip we’d all taken to see one of the Derelicts. Dad had driven for hours. The air conditioning stopped working halfway through the journey and we’d been cooked alive behind the glass. In the past you could have opened the windows - but so far from the atmosphere generators it would have been too dangerous. Naturally we’d all argued the entire way there but it got worse once the heat started to build. Mum and Dad were basically at each others throats by the time we pulled outside a partially collapsed depot.
We were all furious at each other right up until the second we saw it. Those machines, the industry that had build the world, staring back at us. There was dust everywhere of course and it was only because of the holes in the roof that we had the light to see them. I remember that I could barely prevent my fingers from removing the mask from my face to get a better view.
We spent the journey home in silence.
It hit me deeply. Tears began to pool in my eyes. It was all gone. Those we had left behind were all dead. The machines back there in the Derelict, in here on the ship, weren’t any use to anyone. There was no more scientific advancement to be made. There was no more civilisation and what was left of it was right here, all 300 cubic meters of it. This was the sum total of the entire human race - and it could fit inside a house.
I had to sit down.
My old life was long buried in the grave. The whole world was burnt cinder, and we’d never taken notice. We were undergoing this voyage not to save the world but to save a small handful of machinery and just over a hundred people. No one was even sure if there were any people left of the colonies.
Tears filled my eyes and washed along the length of my face as I thought about what my street must look like. My neighbours would have no power with which to wash themselves. Pretty soon they would run out of food. Their little dog, that used the wag its tail in glee, would become their last food reserve. In the darkness of the lightless night they would succumb to the realities of their situation and die, a slow malignant death.
It took a
long time to shake away these thoughts. I struggled to restore my breathing before anyone passed by this area and noticed how affected I was. With a subtle series of movements I ducked out of sight and into one of the rooms hoping for a bit of peace with which I could marshal my emotions.
It was a poor choice. Filling a screen that ran along the wall was a picture of Earth and next to it numbers of the dead. I had to leave, the elevator beckoned.
‘Going Down.’
5